


Quartz, the Pink Kind

by Amrynth



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Anxious Caleb is Anxious, Background Keg/Beauregard, M/M, Molly is alive AU, Rated Teen for Inanimate Phallus Mention, and swearing, s2e26 SPOILERS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:22:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27020428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amrynth/pseuds/Amrynth
Summary: Caleb buys a gift for a dead man on the same day that man shows up at the Xhorhaus very much alive.
Relationships: Mollymauk Tealeaf/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 32
Kudos: 209





	1. The Shopping Episode

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MartiniMayhem](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MartiniMayhem/gifts).



> I started this months ago as a gift for a friend in thanks for doing a lot of proofing work for me. They wanted Caleb buying a gift for Molly and left it up to me if it was before or after episode 26. It takes place somewhere handwavey vague between saving Yasha from Obann and before the negotiations between the Empire and the Dynasty.

The market was bustling, lively, and full of color and noise; he was the opposite, dressed in dark colors and frowning at the display window in front of him. For some time Caleb had been training himself not to think about him. But sometimes he couldn’t stop his brain from making associations without his approval. The brightly colored awning on a shop stall two weeks ago had left him with an empty feeling in his chest and a slow building panic when he couldn’t find what he was looking for; what he was looking for was dead. 

This window display was innocent of any intentional associations, but Caleb couldn’t slow his brain before it was done. He stopped in front of an outlandish window display of dangling charms and brilliant cloth and felt the absence of him like one of his own limbs. His chest tightened until he couldn’t breathe. 

Hero of the Dynasty. Having a panic attack because a pretty window made him think of his friend. His dead friend. Some hero.

Caleb counted to ten, measuring his breathing until it approximated normal. Normal enough that no one but members of the Mighty Nein would have noticed something. Some of them at least. 

When he opened his eyes, Caleb made himself face the window. He’d spent most of his adult life running from his fears when he was able to. Eventually he would have to face them. And a storefront window seemed an innocent enough place to start. The window display was full of charms; now that he could focus they were for keeping away various curses and spirits. He rather doubted the efficacy of any of them as anything but ornamental. He would have asked Jester but he wasn’t sure he would have gotten a direct answer even if she had been there. Along with the charms was jewelry meant to be jewelry, silver and gold and little sparkling crystals. Caleb’s attention was caught by one piece, displayed on a red, embroidered cloth that tugged at him on its own. A sun with a crescent moon dangling beneath it, a piece of pink crystal hanging in the center of the moon. 

It was stupid. And impossible. And he would never see Mollymauk again, so there was no point buying a trinket for him. 

He focused his eyes to look at the glass instead of the display, finding his reflection in the busy, moving marketplace street behind him. Red hair, deep bags beneath his eyes and hollow cheeks; it was about as good as he was going to get in the circumstances. Caleb stepped into the shop without stopping to read the sign overhead.

A bell chimed near the doorway as he stepped through the open door and into the shop. It was a nice enough night in Rosohna that the fresh air was welcome. He was briefly overwhelmed by the smell of incense immediately on walking in and it took Caleb a moment to realize someone had greeted him and he’d missed it. 

“Yes. Hello, good evening,” he answered automatically, hoping that such a boring response wouldn’t be out of place. 

There was a drow at the counter, young and watching him with a combination of suspicion and interest. As a human he wasn’t the typical sort to peruse wares this deep into the heart of Xhorhas. His accent further marked that he did not belong, so Caleb didn’t take it personally that she wasn’t particularly warm. 

“Do you have any books?” Caleb asked, having looked at the interior briefly. 

One whole wall was dedicated to jars of ingredients, though many of the labels were old and peeling and not in a language he was familiar with. Herbs hung from the rafters overhead and he was able to pick out several that he used in his own spells and some he suspected Caduceus had served him as tea before. There was a glass case with jewelry and crystals that looked more expensive than those in the window. Brightly colored shawls caught his attention briefly, but he only brushed one with his hand before the woman at the counter had narrowed her gaze at him.

“Aye, we do. It’s not a library though, they cost money,” she answered. “Other side of the candles there.” 

“Thank you.” He tried to smile but was certain it was more of a grimace than anything else. 

Before he could even get to the books, Caleb was brought up short when one of the candles on the shelf caught his attention. He had a hard time looking directly at it, so he turned the small tag dangling from it and looked to see if it was in common. _Big Guldus. For trouble in love and trouble in bed. 1s_. Caleb finally raised his eyes, unable to resist, at a well-proportioned candle of a phallus held up by weighty balls. It was glorious in an obscene way, coated in dark, purple wax and sitting with several others just like it in various colors. 

Books. Yes. He was going to look at books. Definitely had not come in because of a pretty charm in the window. Double definitely not here to buy a large phallus of a candle. The selection of books was fairly slim, all used and slightly tattered at the edges of the covers; a few books on love spells that he suspected weren’t particularly effective or there wouldn’t be so many. Or so many single people in Rosohna. Caleb was careful to keep his hands to himself as he looked at the spines on the shelf. A book with a green spine caught his attention, _Herbs for the Dead_ written in old copper lettering that had faded slightly in the thicker parts of the letters. 

A quick glance over Caleb’s shoulder confirmed he was not in direct line of sight of the woman at the counter. He whispered a spell to detect magic with his back toward the counter to hide the somatic gesture. 

“Did you need something?” she called, apparently hearing just enough of Caleb’s spell to think he had been speaking to her. 

“No, danke, I am uh, reading the titles aloud. My apologies,” Caleb lied, holding onto the spell to get a sense of his surroundings. 

There was a very faint shimmer of magic on one of the books, and he tried not to reach immediately for it. Instead Caleb picked up one of the books on love spells and leafed through the pages as though checking to see if it was going to help him. He returned that, picking up _Herbs for the Dead_ and flipping to the index at the back. Only once he’d settled that into the crook of his arm did he pull the book from the shelf that had reacted to his spell.

The book was tattered and the spine threadbare to the point of almost falling apart in his hands. Its cover was heavy wood covered in linen and embossed with the image of a violin and half the title rubbed off. The portion of the title he could read said _A Rha… in ...e_. A tag dangled from a slip of paper in the book like a page marker, and he balanced the book so he could read it. Book, water damage but great aesthetic. 5g. He turned the book and could see where the pages wavered and stuck together. 

He added the book on top of the one already in the crook of his arm before taking them both to the front counter. “Hello, these two books please.”

“Oh.” She blinked at him, apparently surprised he was actually here to purchase something and not just to touch her wares. “Anything else?”

Caleb’s stomach did a flip and he couldn’t stop his mouth before words happened. “Oh yes, there’s a piece in the window that I would like. The sun and moon with the crystal. The pink one. Would it be alright if I took a look at it?”

He wanted to spend more money. The realization slowly crept up on the woman at the counter and Caleb could see how she struggled not to completely change her demeanor toward the human in front of her. When she came back with the charm Caleb had asked after, she was smiling; though there wasn’t a lot of difference between her smile and a grimace. 

“Danke.” Caleb’s attention was on the charm. It was foolish to want it. Mollymauk was dead and had been dead for months. He could justify everything else he was purchasing but he knew that was a lie. He was buying reasonable things because he wanted to justify buying something frivolous for a dead man. 

“Ja, I will take this and…” he paused, fingers brushing the pink crystal on the charm while he tried to talk himself out of it. “One moment, there is another thing.”

He left the two books on the counter and walked to the wall to fetch one of the phallic candles from the shelf on the wall. Caleb knew he was blushing; he’d picked a red one because green ran the risk of embarrassing poor Fjord, blue was too close to Jester’s own skin tone, and his mind was too full of Mollymauk to allow him to even look at the purple ones directly. No one of their acquaintances was red down there, not that he could think of, other than under specific circumstances. Oh gods. He returned to the counter and added the 

“Will you sell me the lot for thirty gold?” Caleb asked, doing a tally of what the marks on everything came up to and what he thought he might be able to talk the shopkeep down to.

The woman looked at each book to check its price and make sure Caleb hadn’t slipped any other goods into their pages while doing her own math in her head. “Sure, seems like a good bargain to me.”

Caleb rummaged in his pockets until he found his coin purse, then began counting gold and silver out. “One. Two. Three…”

He emerged from the shop with the candle and the books neatly tucked into his pack. The charm was in a flimsy box but Caleb held it in his hands as though it was precious. It wasn’t made of expensive materials other than the small pink stone. As some point the woman at the counter had mentioned it was rose quartz. 

Before someone could steal the box right from his hand, Caleb tucked it into one of the inner pockets of his coat and started down the street. He’d been out long enough and by himself that possibly someone would get concerned. He was a Human with an empire accent in the heart of the Dynasty, that sometimes drew unwanted attention. Even with his crest, that could lead to a dicey situation if he wasn’t careful. 

Entering the Xhorhaus felt strangely like coming home. As soon as he crossed the threshold, Beauregard emerged from a side room. “Hey, Caleb. Find anything awesome while you were out?”

“That would depend on what your definition of awesome is,” Caleb answered. “I got some books.”

“Ehn. Boring. I mean it’s not boring, because that’s the sort of thing you like. I know you like books man. But like, I meant the good stuff. You know?” she explained, though her explanation left Caleb with more questions than anything else. 

“Oh. Ja. The good stuff. No, I did not find the good stuff. I don’t suppose you have seen Jester or Caduceus, have you?” he asked before she could amble back out of the room. 

“Caddy is up tending to the tree? Maybe? And Jester was writing in her journal last I saw her.” 

“Ah. Thank you.” Caleb stopped in his room briefly before going upstairs, tucking the box from the front pocket under his pillow. It wasn’t actually going to stop any of Mighty Nein from finding it if they got really nosey about what he had been up to. But he also dropped the unknown book onto the coverlet of his bed as a possible decoy. 

He headed up to the second floor with a linen-wrapped bundle tucked beneath one arm and the second book held in the other. Caduceus was easier to find and wouldn’t leave him flustered to try and deliver it, so Caleb went to the roof. 

“Caduceus?”

The roof gardens were one of Caleb’s favorite parts about their new home; other than the library he was slowly building downstairs. He liked the gentle lights from the tree and that Caduceus didn’t mind him appearing at any hour with a book to read under the fairy lights. Other than occasionally bringing tea, he was a man who understood that sometimes quiet was valuable, even with company. 

Something rustled before the firbolg himself stepped out from around the tree where he had probably been tending to some of the plants. “Well hey there, Caleb. What do I owe this pleasure to?”

Caleb pulled the book from where it had been caught against his body and turned it so the title was facing Caduceus. “I was in the market today and I thought this might be of some interest to you. If you do not want it I-”

“Oh wow. Wow. This is. This is just great, you know?” He took the book from Caleb’s hands before he could nervously draw it back as Caleb gradually convinced himself it was a terrible idea to bring a present. He reached out and put one of those massive hands on Caleb’s shoulder, gentle rather than the clap he was expecting. “Thank you Caleb. That’s mighty nice of you. Really just fantastic.” 

It made Caleb smile when Caduceus just sat down with his back against the tree and started to page through the book he’d brought. “You are quite welcome. I would not mind getting a look at it when you are through.” 

“What? Oh yeah, no problem. I’ll even bring it inside when I’m not reading it. Less bugs inside, you know?” Caduceus looked up from the book in his hands and took a moment to realize what Caleb had been saying. But he smiled while he spoke, relaxed and apparently at peace with the world in a way that Caleb had always wondered about. How did he manage it? 

“Thank you, Mister Clay,” Caleb said. He moved back down toward the Xhorhaus, retreating before he could manage to make the interaction awkward. Was it strange to bring a book back for Caduceus spontaneously? 

“Please, Mister Clay is my father,” Caduceus’s voice followed him into the tower the tree grew on and into the house.

Was it strange that he only brought things for a few members of the Mighty Nein? Would the others resent it? Caleb stopped in the stairwell leading down and pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes to count to ten. It would be fine, even if he should have gotten paper and nothing else. And he definitely should not have been getting gifts for a dead man. 

He peeled his hands away and gave his eyes time to clear the starbursts in his vision before continuing down the stairs. Caleb stopped outside Jester and Beauregard’s room to compose himself before knocking on the door. He immediately thought better of actually handing the candle over to Jester and set it by the door and fled back down to the first floor. He heard the door open behind him just as he got safely around the corner and out of sight. 

“Hello? Is there somebody there?” 

Jester’s voice followed him and Caleb hid, trying to move as quick and silent down the stairs as Nott would. He made it to his room without running into anyone, for which he could not describe how thankful he was. He was just so tired, even though all he’d done was a little shopping. He collapsed onto his bed, slipping one hand beneath the pillow so he could feel the shape of the box while he tried to get his body to relax.

Caleb didn’t know how long he’d been asleep, but he knew his neck ached from sleeping in the wrong position. He sat up and oriented himself, oriented the shadows coming in from the artificial night outside and realized he’d been asleep for a few hours. He’d been woken by the ringing of two someones entering the Xhorhaus and a lot of noise that was hard to pick out what was happening. His room wasn’t directly connected to the front entrance; that was part of the reason he had preferred it. 

Was it good noise? Bad noise? Caleb grabbed his bag just in case it was bad noise, shoving the box from beneath his pillow into his pocket. The door in the next room slammed open and closed and he braced himself with a spell at the tip of his tongue. 

“Oh. My. Gosh. Caleb,” Jester was banging on the door, pronouncing his name with exaggeration. His door flew open and he let go of the spell he’d been holding so that it harmlessly disappeared. “You will not believe what is happening. Come and see.” 

There was no point arguing when she was this excited and adamant about something. Caleb set his bag back down beside the bed. “Lead the way Jester. What is it?”

“You will never guess who just showed up at the front door. It’s Keg and I don’t want to spoil it for you,” Jester said, not even giving him space to try and guess but answering for him in a rush. 

“How did she know where to find us?” Caleb asked. There was worry in his voice but then, there was always worry in his voice and Jester didn’t blink at it. 

“Oh you know, I talk to her all the time with my messaging spell. I’m sure I told you about it,” she said, waving a hand.

She had definitely not mentioned, Caleb would have had something to say about letting a former human trafficker know they had committed treason against the empire. He held his tongue though because what was done was done and she was happy about it. Let her enjoy it while she could. 

“-and so I let her know how she could get here and I’m not sure if she came over or under the mountains like us but they’re here now,” Jester was saying. She’d taken his hand in hers and pulled him through the library and on through the dining room to the kitchen where the rest of the Mighty Nein were collected. 

All of the Mighty Nein. 

Caleb’s blood rushed to his ears and he couldn’t actually hear Jester or anyone else. There was Keg, chatting animatedly with Fjord. Her beard was coming in after traveling for some time he guessed. She wasn’t looking directly at Beauregard but Caleb got the impression she was keeping the monk in the corner of her vision. But it wasn’t Keg that captured and held Caleb’s attention. In the center of the group was a bejeweled, purple tiefling in a red tapestry coat. 

Mollymauk. 

As quickly as all the sound in the room had been drawn out, Caleb was overwhelmed by all of the sound all at once. There was laughter and talk and bright smiles and Caleb felt quite drab and grey and that he did not fit in.

“Oh there he is. The stinky wizard,” Keg said, grinning wickedly as she did.

Mollymauk’s head swivelled to look at him, his red eyes as hard to read as they had ever been. 

Jester grinned up at him. “Isn’t it great Caleb? Mollymauk is back!”


	2. The Exposition Episode

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The story, according to Keg (mostly) of how she and Molly ended up at the Xhorhaus.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story lived as "Molly is Alive!" for so long it throws me off now that it has a title. I'm not sure how this chapter ended up short, but I really put together what I knew this story was about working on it. 
> 
> Enjoy Chapter Two!!

So the story went that there was once a princess in a tower who was put to sleep by a wicked queen. And the whole world thought she was dead. To be awoken with a kiss and prove to the world that the princess was still alive. 

Caleb shifted in his bed and turned onto his side. He hadn’t actually expected to fall asleep, but he needed the darkness and the silence to find out which thoughts were his and which were just his companions being loud and excited. 

Mollymauk was alive. And had been for some time. 

When the initial furor had died down, Caleb tucked with his back against the wall where he could see the whole dining room and try to be subtle about following Mollymauk with his eyes, Keg had started to tell her story. He got the impression pieces of the story had leaked out while Jester had been fetching him, but none of it had been told in any sort of cohesive order. 

Keg had spent some time looking for the remnants of the Iron Shepherds after the Mighty Nein had continued on their journey. And there had been some work for Ophelia Mardoon that she glossed over with hands that twitched like she wanted a cigarette. Caleb could sympathize, there were gaps in his memory but thinking back to the things he’d done for the academy left him with a need for something that would fill the missing pieces of his soul. Or to light something on fire.

It had been one of these jobs that Keg had detoured to pay her respects at the lonely grave where Mollymauk had been buried. And she had found it completely turned out, Mollymauk’s coat and his body both missing. She’d dropped the work she was doing and gone hunting for the graverobber, determined to make sure that Mollymauk was exactly where the Mighty Nein expected him to be. 

Mollymauk himself had been quiet through most of the storytelling, watching people around the kitchen with those unreadable red eyes. Caleb kept jerking his gaze away too slow to actually pretend he hadn’t been staring. He didn’t think the tiefling had said more than a few words since he’d come into the room. 

But he remembered this part. Mollymauk finally spoke, the familiar brogue that Caleb had once been able to lose himself in curling his words so they were thick and heavy. Caleb took a deep breath and held it, savoring the sensation of Mollymauk’s accent and his voice. Mollymauk had awoken with dirt in his mouth, dirt in his eyes, and he had clawed his way out of his own grave. He’d taken the sword and coat and stumbled away from where he’d been abandoned.

At this point in the story, Jester gasped and asserted that they hadn’t abandoned him, they wanted to come back. They just hadn’t. The room had gotten quiet and awkward and, in that moment, Mollymauk had looked back to where Caleb was once more. Caleb looked away, too slow once again to pretend he hadn’t been staring intently. Beauregard kept trying to find the right thing to say, seesawing between mad at the accusation and the guilt obvious on her face.

Keg took over, clearing her throat to draw looks from Mollymauk back to herself. The next time Jester had messaged her to chat, Keg had started trying to suss out what they were up to and where they were. She’d taken it as a personal failing when she had been unable to save Mollymauk the first time, she sure wasn’t going to fail him a second time. She’d been able to track what she thought was a graverobber into the edge of the Savalierwood only to find that it was Mollymauk himself.

Caleb turned over in his bed again, his shoulder aching from laying on it in one position too long. He wanted to be the one to bring Mollymauk back to life. He wanted to be the one to breathe life into those lips, to watch as life sparked again into those eyes. Instead Mollymauk had woken up alone, in his own grave and abandoned. Again.

Did he remember them? Yasha had been the one to ask this, her voice low and soft and concerned when she looked at him. They all knew that he’d woken in a shallow grave once before and the old story hung in the air like a ghost around them. 

No. Mollymauk didn’t remember them, but he felt like he knew a bit about some of them from talking to Keg. Keg looked sheepish at this but Caleb felt like those red eyes had turned his direction again and he tried not to flush. What had Keg told him? Did Keg know any of them long enough to really tell Mollymauk about them? Did she know who they had become in the months since they had gone their separate ways?

There had been tea and more talking and Caleb kept avoiding Mollymauk’s eye and the squirming uncomfortable sensation of guilt in his stomach. He was used to that feeling and had been for years. As soon as he could, while Jester had just been regaling everyone with how the Traveller had come to see her and left her the most amazing candle, Caleb retreated to his own room. No one would notice that he was gone. Nott perhaps. No one else. Why would they?

By now the residual sound that carried beneath heavy doors had faded and he still couldn’t find sleep. It wasn’t that Caleb thought Mollymauk was a princess who needed him to rescue him. In this new new life, he was still very capable of rescuing himself. He just wanted to be of use to him. Be something valuable to him. Something that maybe he would want? He groaned and turned onto his stomach, face buried in the pillow. That was one of the more pathetic thoughts to pass through his brain in recent years and that was saying something.

Sleepless nights were made all the worse by being aware of just how much time was passing. The minutes turned into hours turned into a tension and then pain across his shoulders and spreading gradually up into his neck and the base of his skull. He had put the box he’d brought home earlier in the day under the pillow after being transferred from his coat pocket. When sleep was still not forthcoming, he curled onto his side and withdrew it. It felt even more foolish now while he held it than it had when he still thought Mollymauk was dead. In a way he still was, the man they’d known was gone and what was left was someone using the body. That was how Mollymauk himself had once described it.

A sharp rap at the door startled Caleb from the dark spiral of his thoughts. He jumped and shoved his hand back beneath the pillow to hide the box even though the door had not rattled beyond the knocking. 

“One moment.” Caleb called, stumbling out of bed and finding a soft robe to pull on over his scars and wrap around himself. 

He started toward the door and then darted back to the bed to yank the covers up on the bed so there was a semblance of neatness. His hands were trembling when he reached for the door, whoever was on the other side was waiting silently and it made him nervous. 

Of course. The door swung open to reveal Mollymauk leaning against the frame and the sight of him so close and so handsome left Caleb breathless. 

“Hi,” Mollymauk looked directly at him, catching Caleb’s eyes so that he couldn’t possibly look away. “Do you mind if I come in? Just to talk.”

Caleb’s heart hammered in his ribcage and he froze like a deer caught in a hunter’s sights. It felt like someone else’s body moving to the side to let him in. Mollymauk was not only alive but casually walking to sit on the edge of his desk and glance at the scattered notes, the rumpled bed and the disheveled wizard.


	3. The Fateful Encounter Episode

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mollymauk has come to visit Caleb in the dead of night to talk about his favorite subject. Himself!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know there's a little bit of inconsistency with actual events here (Caleb hasn't had the Periapt of Health on his person in a long time but I'm a sap okay?)
> 
> I deeply love this chapter and how deeply broken both of these characters are.

“Hi.” Caleb’s voice cracked like he was still going through puberty. He cleared his throat but the only drinkable water was on the desk just behind Mollymauk and he would have to reach past- Although he was thirsty, that seemed dangerous. 

“You left before the blue one, no don’t tell me. Jester. Right?” Mollymauk had to stop and think before he pulled the right name from memory. “She was telling us about the Traveller, have you heard of this god? I’m only a few months old and I’ve never heard of him.”

Caleb breathed a soft laugh. “Not until I met Jester, no, I had not heard of him. She’s something is she not? A force of nature unto herself I think.”

“Huh. Well apparently he brought her a magic candle and she can use it to tell the future,” Molly continued his story. 

This caused Caleb to laugh, a sharp bark of a noise he didn’t actually mean to make, it just sort of happened. Mollymauk turned his head to look at him. In the dim light of Caleb’s room at night, his eyes glowed soft and red. When Caleb laughed that glow flared with interest, briefly lighting the room to more than the near-darkness. 

“Did you see the candle?” Mollymauk asked, smiling gradually. 

The expression on Molly’s face gradually turned mischievous and familiarity with his smile like that, and the longing Caleb had choked down to see it, all made his chest tighten until his heart seemed to stop and he couldn’t breathe. He might have gasped but he definitely had to sit down on the bed and drag his eyes from Mollymauk’s smile in order to draw a ragged breath. 

“Caleb?” 

“Oh yes I am fine,” he answered a question that had not been asked, hand on his chest where his heart battered itself against his ribs. It was a lie but a white one, Caleb didn’t want to worry Molly unncessarily in his new life. If he wasn’t fine now, he would be soon enough. His voice had came out rough and gravelly so he cleared his throat before speaking again. “No, I mean. Yes I have seen the candle. I may have bought it while I was in the market today and left it for her to find.”

“You know she thinks her god gave it to her, right?” Mollymauk said. His voice wasn’t judging, just soft and inquisitive. 

Caleb shrugged. “She is happy though? That is what matters.” 

“Oh, she’s delighted,” he confirmed. 

“Good.” 

Mollymauk turned his head to look at the notes his ass was on, tail weaving patterns while he sat there. The silence was heavy on Caleb’s shoulders while he tried to figure out how to fill it. He didn’t want Molly to get bored and leave. While he was here, in Caleb’s room, Mollymauk was real and alive and Caleb could confirm it with his eyes. Theoretically he could reach out to touch him and thinking about it made his fingers extend as though he was about to do so. If Mollymauk left, he would be as real as memory allowed him to be. And that wasn’t much different than when he had been dead. 

“So what brings you to my room late at night?” Caleb asked after running the line through his head three times.

This caught Molly’s attention and he looked up and turned glowing red eyes back to Caleb. His expression was hard to read in the pause between catching his attention and when Mollymauk finally spoke. But he wasn’t smiling like that, mischievous and familiar, so Caleb could bear his attention for the time being. 

“You left early,” Mollymauk finally said, lifting a hand to shove hair back from his face. “Everyone else was eager to tell me about myself.”

“And you wanted to hear the same thing from me?” Caleb asked, pushing the fingernails of the hand furthest from Molly into the palm of his hand. 

“Do you have the same thing to tell me as everyone else?”

“Well, Yasha knew you the longest so I doubt that I can tell you all the same stories that she can.” There was a pause as Caleb tried to come up with something to tell him. Instead of an interesting fact, he blurted the first thing that came to mind. “Do you think of yourself as Mollymauk?”

“Who else would I be?” he asked a question in return. “No, I know that this is not the first time I have woken up in a grave, though that is definitely new information. I suppose I do, it’s who I was told I was. Told I sound like. And he seems to be an important person to you.” 

Caleb’s heart stuttered in his chest, probably not for the last time that night. “You were important to all of us. Are important.”

“Then I think I’d like to be Mollymauk, instead of anyone else I could choose.” 

“Alright, Molly.” Caleb found himself smiling when he said this, unable to stop it. It was very much Mollymauk to make such a decision so easily, once he’d set his mind to something he would accomplish it or die trying. “So what can I tell you that you have not already heard?”

Mollymauk’s mouth opened as though he was about to say something and thought better of it, closing again immediately afterward. “Well, I’ve heard a good bit of detail about my tattoos. I know where my name originated. I’ve been given a thorough description of my act at the circus, did you know I was part of the circus? Of course you do. And I know how I died.”

“You know a lot then,” Caleb said, searching through his brain for something to tell Mollymauk that he wouldn’t have heard from the rest of the Mighty Nein already and also didn’t sound like the besotted thoughts of one idiot wizard. “How many eyes are there?”

“Pardon?” 

“Your tattoos. Have you counted the eyes?” Caleb asked. 

Molly immediately looked at his right hand, lifting it to examine the snake tattoo that began there. He looked up at the ceiling, the glow of his eyes turning it rosy until he looked back at Caleb again. “I haven’t counted them, no.” 

“There were nine.”

“Nein? What was I, some sort of mascot?”

This made Caleb laugh again, leaning just slightly toward the object of his desire once more. “Nein, I mean, no, nothing like that. Nine, the number. Nine eyes. Your tattoos, flattering as they may be, are at least partially meant to disguise the eyes. You awoke the first time with them.” 

There was a contemplative silence between them as Molly considered the eye on the back of his hand a second time. “Hm. I like when you refer to me in the present tense.”

“I like having a reason to,” Caleb admitted. He hoped the red light from Mollymauk’s eyes would disguise the flush that crept up his cheeks. “Ah but let me think, is there something more personal than that?”

Molly lifted an eyebrow but didn’t answer the rhetorical question. He let the silence linger between them. Somewhere in their conversation the pressure of the quiet had changed and Caleb found it comfortable. It was a silence with a lot of unspoken things he couldn’t begin to guess at. But it was also a silence between him and a friend that, for a long time, he hadn't thought he would get to share anything with again. His mind wandered to the earring he’d bought earlier that day and he had to stop himself from reaching for the box hidden beneath his pillow. 

“You love life in a way that I always found enviable.” Caleb finally filled the silence with the first appropriate thing that came to mind. Of course he would know he was beautiful, Caleb didn’t have to tell Molly that about himself. But it had never been a purely physical attraction, Caleb had been drawn to Mollymauk like a moth to flame because he was everything that Caleb was not. 

“Oh?”

“I suppose when you have rebuilt yourself, you get to choose who you want to be,” Caleb said, partially making conversation with Mollymauk but also thinking out loud. “I always admired who you choose to be.”

“What did I choose?” Mollymauk asked. 

“To be unfailingly kind. To be generous. To experience everything and make up your mind about it only once you had. To make the world better for being in it.” Caleb couldn’t stop the flow of words once it started. There were so many things he hadn’t told Mollymauk when he had the chance before. If this was all a dream, he wanted to make sure he said them now. 

He looked up and Mollymauk was so close now; Caleb wasn’t sure when he’d drifted closer to the desk, but the tiefling’s leg was only inches from his knee. 

“This is nice, I like hearing you talk about me.”

When Caleb laughed this time, the sound was soft and barely more than a breath. Somehow the space between them had become intimate, with Molly’s eyes the only source of light. “I can tell you something else, Mister Tealeaf.”

“And what is that, Mister Widogast?” 

When had Mollymauk learned his last name? “That you are very good at pretending to be aloof. But you care about people more than you let on.” 

“And what if that was the old Mollymauk, not the new one?” he asked. 

“Because you have chosen to be Mollymauk. Not a new one, because that would imply that- Do you want to be a new Molly?” Caleb redirected what he was saying, looking up at Mollymauk.

“No, I think I like this one. When you describe him he sounds like someone that I would like to be.”

“Which rather proves my point. You do care about people, even if you are pretending otherwise.” He smiled as he said it though.

“Don’t tell anyone.” 

“Mollymauk. I am sorry that we abandoned you. There is no other word for it. We did not have the means or the ability to bring you back when you-” He couldn’t actually get himself to say that Molly had died. It had been real for too long to even summon the idea by forming it with a word. So Caleb swallowed it down and spoke again. “But we did abandon you. We knew you had awoken in a grave once and yet we left you behind.”

There wasn’t an immediate answer from Mollymauk, who was looking down at Caleb with that unreadable expression again. “It surprised the hell out of me, too.” 

“I have something of yours,” Caleb said. His voice had gone husky with emotion but he chose to ignore it for now. From within his shirt he pulled two pendants tangled together, carefully extracting the red pendant from his own. 

“What is it?” 

“It was supposed to keep you alive and- I held onto it for foolish, sentimental reasons. But I think it can better serve its purpose if I give it to you.” 

Caleb held the Periapt of Health out to Molly, the chain closed so it dangled from his fingers and shone in the light of Mollymauk’s eyes. Instead of just taking the necklace, Mollymauk’s hands closed around his and Caleb was too busy processing just how warm his hands were to notice anything else. 

“Keg told me, you know,” Molly’s voice dropped as he said this and he’d leaned in so close there was practically no space between them. Caleb was looking right up into his eyes. 

“Told you what?” Caleb could barely think so it was impressive he put together a coherent question. 

“About us. You don’t have to play the gentleman and give me space to figure out my own feelings. I’ve had enough time to decide I still want to be with you.” 

The hands wrapped around his drew Caleb closer and it was an impossible task for him to make more than a soft, inquisitive noise. Molly’s hands were rough and calloused and unbearably gentle in how they held his hand, then his elbow and then his cheek. 

“Thank you, Caleb, for keeping a part of me with you.” 

Caleb’s world contracted and all he could think of was the exquisite shape of Mollymauk’s lips and the soft glow of his eyes. He didn’t have the willpower to object when Molly kissed him, couldn’t find the words to let him know they hadn’t been together. Instead Caleb found himself drawn into kissing Mollymauk back despite knowing it made him a terrible person. He’d known that before this moment, had known it for years. But for just the span of a few beats of his heart, Caleb let himself believe this was possible and not just a dream. Mollymauk was alive.

He liked to think he was a man of logic, that he reacted to pressure in a rational way. But he was also, somewhere deep beneath his skin, a Volstrucker, a creature of instinct and violence. And he’d rejected that, but sometimes the instinct was closer to the surface than rationality. It was a carnal instinct that had Caleb pulling Mollymauk closer to him. He needed to feel that he was solid, feel his heart flutter beneath his skin before he could be real. 

Molly didn’t resist the pull of Caleb’s hands, transferring his weight from the desk to the bed to straddle Caleb’s lap. His tail wrapped around the arm that had pulled him to keep it in place and he kept a firm hand on Caleb’s cheek. 

“See? That wasn’t so hard was it?” Mollymauk asked, putting barely enough space between their lips to shape words. 

Caleb swore in Zemnian, just loud enough to be heard and making Mollymauk chuckle. “Molly this is- we should-”

The tiefling cut him off, kissing him again and sliding closer like they could be one body instead of two. One arm wound around Caleb and then other toyed with the button at the top of his shirt. “I don’t want to talk. Not yet. Unless you don’t want this. Caleb, do you want this?”

It was so complicated. The heat of Mollymauk on his lap, his fingers just lightly touching his chest and his eyes holding his gaze all made it difficult to think straight. “What if this is not what you think? Mollymauk.” 

Red eyes blinked at him and Caleb wished they were easier to read, not for the first time. But he was caught in them anyway. “That isn’t the question I asked. If you don’t want to, this can wait. I’ll go back to my room and we can pretend this didn’t happen and go about getting to know one another again the boring, normal way. So I’ll ask you again. Do you want this?”

It would be a lie if he said no. Caleb swallowed and let the hand on Mollymauk’s back slide along his wondrous coat while he tried to find words that would do everything. Allow him to be completely honest and also keep this person close. But then he looked up and saw Molly looking at him and he could only answer his question with a simple, quick truth. “Yes.”

“Good.” Mollymauk smiled. “And we can talk all you want tomorrow. About tattoos or things I don’t know yet or uh,” he glanced at Caleb’s desk. “Whatever dunamancy is or how amazing our first night back together was. I do want to hear more nice things about myself, that would be good, too.”

This made Caleb laugh quietly. “Alright then kiss me again.” Molly leaned forward to comply but Caleb stopped him with one hand. “Wait. If- Either of us can ask to stop. ...Right?”

Mollymauk licked his hand and Caleb retracted it with a sound that was rather higher pitched than he would have liked to admit to. But the tiefling looked pleased with himself and answered before Caleb could say anything. “Of course.”

“Okay.” He smiled up at Molly, knowing it was the dopey, love-smitten grin he’d wanted to share with him when they had both been alive together the first time. 

“Now can I kiss you?” Mollymauk sounded petulant. 

“Yes please.” 

Before leaning in, Mollymauk smiled at him. It wasn’t his typical smile, all charm and veneer and brass. Instead Molly smiled at him, soft and sweet and so young for a moment when he looked at Caleb. It was enough to make the wizard’s heart ache. He was so beautiful. Then he found his lips and Caleb wound his arm up into the open front of Molly’s coat. To his surprise the back of Molly’s shirt was damp with sweat and Caleb closed his fist around the fabric and pulled him fractionally closer. 

They broke apart just enough for Molly to reach briefly into one of the inner pockets on his jacket and then let the whole thing slide off his shoulders and into a heap on the floor. Once his arms were free of it, the tiefling brought his hands back to Caleb’s buttons. He had to look down at what he was doing and Caleb took advantage of his distraction to pull the edge of Molly’s shirt free and find the skin beneath without bothering to remove it. There was something forbidden in the feeling of Molly’s skin, the way his muscles moved beneath it and the warmth just beneath the tips of Caleb’s fingers. 

“There. Why are your clothes so complicated?” Molly asked, finally managing all the tiny buttons down the front of Caleb’s shirt. 

“Because the Xhorhasian style is to make it nearly impossible to use the bathroom in a hurry,” Caleb answered. 

“What?” There was a laugh in Molly’s voice, disbelief just beneath the surface. 

“Well, that is not the primary intent. But it is the unforeseen-”

He stopped mid-sentence as Mollymauk had pulled Caleb’s shirt off but rather than cast it aside like his own coat, the tiefling had gotten distracted by the scars on his arms. Mollymauk was quiet as he inspected them, fingers tracing between the scars and leaving a trail of goosebumps on his skin. 

“These are different from mine, no?” Mollymauk looked up at Caleb, the shape of mouth soft and concerned. 

“Ah yes. Yours are part of your magic. Mine are- well perhaps they are not so different after all. These were an attempt by a teacher of mine to give me greater powers,” Caleb explained. It was hard to think of such a dark place while Mollymauk was tracing soft patterns on his skin. 

“Someone else did this to you?” The soft look turned into a scowl. 

“A long time ago.” Caleb reached up with his free hand to trace the shape of Molly’s jaw. 

His scowl relaxed at his touch and Molly turned his cheek toward Caleb’s hand. “Alright, I won’t plot murder unless you want me to.”

“That, Mollymauk, is the most romantic thing,” Caleb said, drawing him closer with just the touch on his jaw. “Of course we should plan his murder, but we should plan it together.”

Mollymauk laughed, a wonderful, wicked sound that Caleb had missed while he’d been gone. He closed the distance and kissed Caleb again, the hard need of their first few kisses dissipating into something softer and lingering. Caleb felt dazed when Molly pulled back and lifted his right arm, kissing one of the old scars on the soft inside of his forearm. 

“You’re not going to- to kiss them all, are you?” Caleb asked, stumbling over his words when Mollymauk moved from one scar to the next, just inside his elbow.

“Who’s going to stop me. You?” Mollymauk asked, looking up with a cocked eyebrow. He waited just a moment, giving Caleb the opportunity to object, then grinned and resumed what he was doing. 

His lips traced up the inside of Caleb’s right forearm but when he bent his elbow to attend to the other left, Caleb hooked a finger into his horn and drew him up into a proper kiss. Caleb’s fingers found the deep front of Mollymauk’s shirt, tracing scars along his collar. Like this he was close enough to feel Molly’s pulse quicken and the way his breathing changed with each brush of his fingers. 

“Should I return the favor?” Caleb asked. 

“What?” Mollymauk blinked rapidly, his voice husky when he brought Caleb into focus. 

“Kiss every scar?” He shifted just slightly to angle his head for kissing layers of scarring on Mollymauk’s neck. 

Caleb found Molly’s pulse on his throat and the tiefling made such a soft noise as he leaned his head back to expose it. He nearly fell off Caleb’s lap and they both jerked to attention in order to scramble and keep him on the bed. Molly laughed first when they unfroze and Caleb turned his whole body to deposit Mollymauk more securely on the bed. Somehow he ended up draped above and beside him while they both laughed. Caleb had a hand on Mollymauk’s stomach over his shirt while Molly used his knee to gently rub Caleb’s hip. 

Their laughter quieted down and Caleb was just caught in Mollymauk’s eyes, his heart so full just having him here and verifiably alive. He was startled when Molly picked his hips up off the bed to tug the end of his shirt up and then brought the whole thing up and over his head. There was just a moment’s hesitation before Caleb let himself put his hand back onto Molly’s bare stomach. His eyes travelled up the suddenly exposed purple skin, indulging in all of it. A new scar layered on top of the others arrested Caleb’s attention as soon as he reached it with his eyes. 

“That one is new. I think,” Mollymauk said, following his gaze. 

In the center of his chest, just above his heart, a large scar dominated all the straight, small scars from his magic. 

“Ja, that is new.”

Caleb lifted his eyes to find Mollymauk’s, then shifted his weight down to lean and kiss that particular scar. He put his hand on the bed beside Molly’s waist, hyper aware of all the places their skin was touching. Molly put a hand on the back of Caleb’s neck, the ends of his fingers brushing up into the hair at the base of his skull. 

He turned his head and put his ear on the scar, eyes closing as he listened to Molly’s heartbeat beneath the scar. 

“Can we stay like this tonight? Just like this?” Caleb asked.

There was a pause above him while Mollymauk considered his request, fingers now carding Caleb’s hair back from his face. “I would like that.” 

With the solid warmth of Mollymauk beneath his cheek and the sound of his heart, Caleb felt reassured that perhaps he was really and truly alive. The house was silent around them, the tiefling was warm beneath him, and Caleb finally fell asleep.


	4. The Big Reveal Episode

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little Molly perspective.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this one chapter is SO LONG. Enjoy.

When he was born, he couldn’t breathe because of the weight of the world pressing down on his chest. The world was dark and the world was cold and his limbs would not obey him. He was tangled and the panic almost kept him where he woke up. 

Coming into the world was hard and it was painful. He clawed his way out of his own grave, following an instinct that lingered from lifetimes ago. His first proper breath of air stung his lungs and he coughed up dust and dirt while trying to free himself of the tapestry that had nearly prevented his escape. 

He was fingering the dirt-stained but fine material of the tapestry when it occurred to him that he didn’t know who he was. Resting against his chest within the wrapping white and silver material was a brightly decorated sword with a worn edge. Did it belong to him? And there, folded around the blade of the sword, a piece of paper. 

“H’o?” His voice was entirely new to him so he wasn’t sure if it was meant to be dry and crackly like that, or if it was a result of waking up in the ground. 

Of course there was no answer. A thin layer of snow covered the earth around him and he left a smear of dirt pulling the rest of himself out of the grave and then lay shivering in the tapestry he’d been wrapped in. The cold was deep in his bones and he wasn’t sure he would ever warm up. At the head of his grave, like a marker, a vibrant, multicolored coat waved in the wind. Was it a warning? Was it an offering? 

He pulled the coat on, pausing just long enough to consider a snake head tattooed onto purple skin on one hand, before just shoving his hands into the pockets to try and find some warmth. Who was he? His heart rattled around in his chest like he was empty of anything but the barest functions to be alive. 

Paper. In the mess of earth and stone, he snatched an ornate card and ran fingers across the intricate design on the back. It reminded him of the coat. Or was it the tattoos? And he was confused again. Offering? Warning? Remembrance? He flipped the card and stared at the face, brushing his fingers across the moon inscription facing him. 

He looked up, squinting when the light stung his eyes. There was one of the moons in the sky and he collected himself and the clues he had to follow it. Getting the paper from the sword’s blade was tricky, it had been carefully folded to keep it from getting lost and he nearly cut it and himself in the process. 

Inside was a very brief letter. He had a name, and it was more than he’d known about himself moments ago. Mollymauk. And he’d been abandoned. That’s not what the letter said, but it was what he understood. They didn’t know if he was going to come back or not and if he did to ask the Gentleman, capital G. From the Mighty Nein. That was a lot of names that he had no associations for. But he stopped himself from running dirty, wet fingers across the neat, crisp handwriting of the letter. Instead he folded it and slipped it into a pocket on the inside of the coat.

And then he followed the moon. 

It was necessary for Mollymauk to stop and rest as he forced himself to follow the only sign he had. When it grew dark he stared at the moon, just sitting in the snow where he found himself and wrapping tightly in the dragon tapestry. Though he didn’t know precisely what time he’d crawled from his own grave, Mollymauk kept going like that for another day, stumbling toward the moon. Early on his third day there was a purple smudge on the horizon and he took that as a good sign. He was purple. It was purple. Perhaps the smudge was whatever a Mighty Nein was. 

The smudge was a forest. Mollymauk suspected a forest hadn’t left the note he’d found and read in the half-dark of the night. He didn’t know who the Mighty Nein were and he didn’t know who had written the note, but he knew that it was the closest thing to people that he had. His only connection to who or what he might have been. The people who had left him in the ground and gone about their lives. But he surely hadn’t been alive, the note was clear about that. The trees were too dense and tall to see the moon so he just sat beneath one and considered the note, the closest thing he had to a friend.

“Hey. You. In the coat. You fucking piece of shit. What did you do with Molly?” 

Oh. That was him. What had he done with himself? That seemed a pretty intense philosophical question for someone only three days old. He looked up from the note and tucked it back into his pocket where he liked to think it was safe. 

He took a breath and let it go, words too hard and complicated. There was something familiar and comforting about the note and the short message on it. It didn’t have to make sense because it was written for a Mollymauk who knew who that was. 

“Well fuck me running. It’s you.”

Yes, but who was he? And for that matter who was she? 

She was short and wide and muscular, brandishing an axe and hammer. Well, she had been brandishing them, now they lowered to her sides and her bravado drained out to leave her looking deflated. After putting the hammer on the snow, handle up, she pulled a ratty cigarette from her mouth and dropped it. 

“Well? You’re awful quiet compared to the last time I saw you. Well, before that fight that is. You’re not a zombie, are you? What happened?” She picked her hammer back up and slid it into a loop on her belt as she walked up, crouching down before him. 

He took a breath and tried, really tried to ask her the same question, but only managed a soft vowel sound instead. Did she know the Gentleman? 

“You look like garbage,” she informed him. 

Mollymauk wasn’t sure what his usual appearance was, but wandering toward the moon for two days probably hadn’t been an improvement, so he was inclined to agree. 

“Well. I guess you look pretty good for a dead guy. Come on, let’s make camp somewhere that’s not the Savalirwood. I don’t fancy getting eaten by a mutant bear, do you?” She stood back up and offered him a hand. 

After considering her and her hand, Mollymauk took it and rose to his feet with some much-needed assistance. 

“Your hands-” she didn’t let go once he was on his feet. “Oh shit. Oh shit. Did you dig your own way out of there?” 

When she looked up at him, Mollymauk nodded, at least capable of that even if words escaped his command. 

“So you were- but it’s been-” She was interrupted by a loud noise coming from the woods and she hefted her axe in both hands. “We shouldn’t stay here.” 

Molly had no argument for that, hand gripping the blade on his hip. He didn’t know if he possessed the muscle memory to use it or not, but it must have been his to have been left with him. Unless it too had been abandoned like so much garbage. 

They walked to a copse of trees far enough from the Savalirwood that she determined it was safe enough to set up camp. Mollymauk had eventually relaxed his grip on the sword and wrapped back up in his tapestry, so he watched with interest as she put camp together. 

“Molly, do you want to collect some wood? For a fire, you look a little frozen.” 

He nodded and kept her in sight while he found fallen wood for a fire. 

It wasn’t until they were sitting shoulder to shoulder, watching the fire when she finally asked. “Do you remember me?”

Mollymauk looked at her, not really sure how to answer that. Finally he shook his head. He ought to remember her, as she clearly remembered who he was. But he didn’t know her any better than he knew himself. Hell, at least he knew his own name. 

“I’m Keg.”

Now he knew her as well as he knew himself. 

“I think it’s my fault that you died,” she continued, glaring at the fire in front of her. “I tried to make up for it but- I failed you. Do you remember anything?”

He shook his head again. From his pocket he withdrew the letter he’d read every night, offering it to her. 

“Oh geez, I don’t read too good. I think this is the note from Caleb? Do you remember him?” Keg asked, squinting at the letter and handing it back. 

Mollymauk wanted to ask about the Gentleman but instead Keg offered him a completely new name. Caleb. He looked down at the neat handwriting and tried to guess what the person who had written it was like. At least he had a name now. Perhaps he knew Caleb as well as he knew himself as well. 

“I could never quite tell if you two were a thing. Were you a thing? I guess maybe you wouldn’t know. Do you remember the Mighty Nein? That’s what your friends called themselves.” 

It was easy to listen to Keg, enjoying the warmth and the first companionship he could remember. That first night she told him about the Mighty Nein, describing them and jumping between members as she did. 

Caleb was a wizard but a dirty smelly one. Maybe he wasn’t that bad looking if you didn’t mind dating stinky ones. She started with him because of the letter, explaining that he was adept with fire and had a cat that wasn’t always a cat. Sometimes the cat was a bird. He was good with fire but he feared it as much as he loved it. 

His best friend was a little goblin girl named Nott who had an unhealthy love of alcohol, buttons and alchemy. Mollymauk had given her flask a pointed look when she’d mentioned Nott liked alcohol too much for the second time and she grinned at him. 

“I didn’t say she was the only one who liked to drink too much.” 

But then she’d offered him the flask and he’d accepted a drink of harsh alcohol that burned on the way down but warmed him from the inside. 

There was also Beau but gosh there wasn’t a lot to say about her. She was really strong and maybe sometimes a little harsh around the edges but it was just the sort of thing you got used to in someone after a while and some people might even find it sort of endearing but definitely Keg did not because that would mean she was particularly invested in her and that was certainly not the case. But she had really pretty eyes and when she smiled it was like watching the stars come out at night and he really had to see it to understand what she was talking about. Anyone would have seen that. It wasn’t like Keg had spent a particular amount of time thinking about Beau’s eyes. 

Mollymauk handed the flask back to Keg as she described Beau and became increasingly nervous. She gratefully took a swig.

“You know what I mean though. I mean. You did before. Caleb might not be a lot to look at if you’re not into dudes but if you are wow he’s probably pretty dazzling. I can’t actually remember what color his eyes are but he has red hair and that’s pretty,” Keg tried to overcompensate for how much she had talked about Beau by bringing the conversation back around to the wizard. 

He turned his head just enough to catch her eye and smiled as he shrugged his shoulders once. Molly would have to take her word for it, she would know better than he would if he and this Caleb had been anything more than travelling companions. 

There was this strange priest guy, Caduceus who had joined the group and continued with them. He was a firbolg and she hadn’t met one before but he lived in a cemetery and drank tea he grew from dead people. Mollymauk raised his eyebrows, he hadn’t had tea grown in a normal way that he could remember, but now he was curious if the other kind was better or not. 

And she didn’t know much about his other friends, they’d been working to rescue them from the Iron Shepherds when she had met the Mighty Nein. Jester was another tiefling- he glanced at her and she clarified he was also a tiefling but they weren’t related at all. Fjord was a half-orc and then Yasha was maybe a human, she wasn’t actually sure. She wasn’t rainbow colored like the other two. She could vouch for Yasha being intimidating but in a good way, and Keg could have been into that if she hadn’t been paying attention to other things. And Jester was cute if you liked your girls sweet. But other than that she had split from the Mighty Nein shortly after they had saved them, for personal reasons. 

Mollymauk ticked them all off on his fingers and didn’t quite add up to nine people. He showed his six extended fingers to Keg, eyebrows up with the question he couldn’t verbalize. 

“Oh yeah. Well,” she reached over and carefully extended one more finger. “Seven once you’re back with them. But yeah it’s um. Nein, not nine. Like the Zemnian word for no I think? It’s supposed to be a pun, Caleb explained it once and I forget.”

He laughed quietly, then nudged her with an elbow and added an eighth finger. 

“Oh that. I mean. I have my own thing and I don’t know if they’re really going to want me, you know? I’m- you- it’s complicated. I’m a coward.” She kept trying to find the right explanation but then looked up at him before finally admitting that. “I froze up in a fight and that’s why you died. And I can’t expect them to actually forgive me for that but I think if we’re careful we can track down where they are and get you back to them. I’m not going to fail you again.”

Mollymauk wiggled his eight fingers again. He didn’t know the Mighty Nein but he’d known Keg for a few hours at this point and didn't think she was a coward. Cowards rarely admitted to such. And he couldn’t say why he knew that, but his gut told him. He didn’t have much so he might as well listen to it. 

“Yeah shut up. I hope you learn to talk soon because you’re annoyingly smug when you can communicate using your stupid face like that. Go to sleep and we’ll start walking to a proper tavern tomorrow. And hopefully you start using your words or start remembering something,” she said, making a face at him. 

Mollymauk slept with his back against Keg’s, sword against his chest and the both of them wrapped in the tapestry. He had no choice but to trust her, trust that she did know who he was. While it was true she could be lying, her lie was very detailed and specific about certain details. Beau in particular and that she was responsible for his death. He wished he could ask why they had left him behind, ask why he’d been abandoned. But he didn’t have the words and maybe soon enough he would be able to ask them himself. 

-

“I’d really rather not go through Nogvorut what with the war and all.” Keg passed him a hot beverage as she glared into the distance. “But seeing as I’m ditching work for the Mardoons to babysit your ass we can’t go to Shadycreek either. So I guess we just deal with an annoying number of Righteous Brand.”

Mollymauk didn’t know what any of these were and listened with interest. He would have been fine going to any of these places; a night’s sleep next to a fire had done wonders for making him feel a little more confident in surviving more than a day at a time. Or maybe it was the sausage that Keg had kept passing to him off the fire until he couldn’t possibly eat more. That had also done wonders. Sausage was somewhere at the top of his very short list of favorite things. Maybe just below Keg herself. 

“You got words yet, purple man?” she asked. 

He shrugged and wrapped his hands around the tin mug to feel the heat. “Mm?”

“That’s a start. So what we need to do is figure out how to get in touch with one of the magic types. I’m sure it’s basically nothing for them at this point to bop in and out of a familiar location. They’ll get you, I’ll go finish this job and no one will be wanted by a crime family.” 

This earned a rise of his eyebrows as a form of query. His questioning about her line of work was cut short when he took a sip of the hot beverage and found it was a dark, bitter drink. He lifted the cup as his question this time, looking to Keg for answers. 

“Coffee dude. Like, really shitty coffee, sorry. But it’s just coffee. Nothing special.” She was trying to come across like she wasn’t pleased he liked it, but couldn’t quite hide the smile behind her own mug. 

Coffee. That was on the list too. He liked the sharpness of it, liked how it felt compared to the hot greasy sausage, liked the smell. Eventually his list would be long enough to not include almost everything, but for now almost everything he’d experienced in his four days since birth were on his list of favorite things. 

-

Beds were definitely one of Mollymauk’s favorite things. He and Keg split one bed when they found an inn that skirted the line between cheap enough they could afford it, and where Keg thought they would make it through the night without getting their throats cut. Mollymauk also added baths to his list of favorite things, even if he didn’t know the difference between a good bath and the barrel of warm-ish water he got to soak his own gravedirt from his skin in. 

“Not bad right?” Keg asked, head and cigarette outside of her own barrel next to him. 

“Not bad,” he parroted after her. It was strange that he could understand words but linking them together on his own was complicated and difficult. 

“We can’t get lavish or anything but we can get food tonight. If it’s a long trip to get to the Nein we’re going to have to do some work along the way, you okay with that?” she closed her eyes and leaned against the side of her barrel. 

“Yes.” 

Keg started to say something and stopped immediately, looking around the room startled. 

“Well that’s the damnedest. Hey Jester I’m not really doing anything in particular but I was just wondering what you guys have been up to. It’s been a while right? Funny thing. How’s it going?” She answered a voice that Mollymauk couldn’t hear, but the name she used was familiar. 

Jester. Blue tiefling. Cleric of the Traveller. Cute as a button and really sweet. Was kidnapped by the Iron Shepherds. Mollymauk ran it through in his mind, trying to sort out if any of his memories of her were his own or from listening to what Keg had told him about the Might Nein. Maybe there wasn’t much of a difference yet. 

“Maybe she’ll answer back.” Keg took a drag of her cigarette and breathed the smoke away from Mollymauk. “Didn’t know she could do that. Or that she would. Hey you don’t have any secret powers do you?” 

He shrugged. Instead of answering he scrubbed harsh soap into his hair, carefully working around his horns and all the decorations attached to them. Whoever he’d been before, he’d certainly loved accessories. Molly ducked beneath the water’s surface and rinsed before climbing out of his barrel. 

“Oh wait, warn a girl so I don’t have to see your dangles next time,” Keg grumbled. “Oh- actually.” She stopped talking, listening once again to something that Mollymauk couldn’t hear. 

“Wow that sounds like a lot. Where do you think you guys will be heading next? How is Beau, does she- nevermind. How’s Caleb?” She paused and wiggled her eyebrows at Mollymauk. “Actually that’s relevant, I found a mutual friend and we’re hoping to cross paths with you all.” 

Those were the two names Molly was the most familiar with. Beau because while Keg tried to play it cool it was clear she was not cool where Beau was concerned. Caleb because she liked to add him into almost any conversation about the Mighty Nein. And as she was carrying most of the conversation still that was mostly what they talked about. 

He resumed drying off, throwing his towel around his waist when he was done for Keg’s benefit rather than his own. There was a polished surface that worked as a very dim mirror and Molly walked barefoot to stand in front of it, getting a proper look at himself for the first time he could remember. 

“Yes, you’re very pretty too,” Keg said, sounding as much annoyed as she was amused. 

Molly was inclined to agree. He had enjoyed watching other people as they’d come close to the town walking along the Glory Run. And it had been delightful when they’d gotten into Nogvorut proper and there had been people to look at all over. They came in such a variety that it delighted Mollymauk and he’d added that to his list of favorite things. There was something quite pleasing about his shape though, the marks on his purple skin and when he grinned at himself. He had questions about the scars but sometimes, when he was just on the edge of sleep, he could feel the power thrumming in his veins and he would almost remember what it meant. 

In the center of his chest was a thick scar, pale against the darker purple of his skin, shaped rather like a star. The first time he’d taken his shirt off, Keg had informed him that was how he died. 

“You too,” he answered after a moment, dragging himself forcefully from other, darker thoughts. He picked his words from hers and grinned at the dark reflection he could just barely make out behind him. “Very pretty.”

Keg snorted from her bath and sank down until she was just a dark curve over the edge of her barrel. 

Still charmed by his own reflection, Molly grinned at himself one more time before striding back to his barrel to wash his clothes in the slightly murky water he’d left behind. 

-

Crossing the border was easier than expected. Mollymauk knew enough about the world at that point to know there was a war. But his only friend in all of the world was a professional criminal. it made certain illegal acts, such as crossing the border, much easier. 

Jester had eventually let them know that they had a home in Xhorhas so the next step in getting Molly back to the Mighty Nein was to also be in Xhorhas. It had only taken a couple days for Keg to find a paying gig, smuggling wares from the Empire into the Dynasty. If they were going to risk their lives crossing enemy lines, she said, they at least ought to get paid for it. And as she didn’t know where in the Dynasty they were going yet, once they were across the mountains they just had to manage civilization. 

Travelling from Assarius to Rosohna was a different matter entirely. They travelled at night when possible, slipping through the darkness and sleeping during the day. When they were curled together, hidden in the crook of a tree or half-buried with their heads camouflaged, Keg would tell him stories about the Might Nein. 

The longer they travelled together, the more she would fill in the gaps with her imagination, embellishing her stories with colorful imagery. She spent a lot of time talking around Beau in such a way that she was the subject of the story even when she was absent from the tale. Keg also liked to talk about Mollymauk and Caleb in a way that Molly had started to suspect her certainty about Caleb and him being a couple was less certain. 

But his mind was full of Caleb anyway. When Mollymauk couldn’t sleep he would unfold and read his now very-worn letter that he had been buried with. The Gentleman perhaps wasn’t a dead end, but travelling all the way to Zadash when they knew the Mighty Nein were in the opposite direction seemed pointless. But who was Caleb? According to Keg, he was a smelly wizard but he was Molly’s smelly wizard. Sometimes he tried to fill his imagination with someone, tried to place someone in his fantasies but all he had was red hair. 

The first time Keg had gotten her own room at an inn, she’d had a tall woman on her arm, laughing at one of her jokes. Mollymauk had watched with some interest when she’d lead the woman upstairs, putting the pieces together. Even if Keg had Beau, in her heart if not her hands, perhaps Beau was not hers. There was a conversation in the morning about exclusivity and what being together actually meant. Keg didn’t know what his arrangement with Caleb had been, she even admitted she didn’t know what she and Beau had arranged. She’d become sullen after that, retreating from the conversation for a morning ale and avoiding the topic entirely. 

Molly simply wasn’t sure what he could offer to the image he had of Caleb in his mind. He was the only person he knew of to leave something at the grave for him, and he sought the concept of Caleb in his handwriting. The next morning, Mollymauk accepted an invitation from a handsome stranger with blonde hair that had the faintest hint of strawberry to it. Quickly enough Molly had begun to work out what he liked, though the preference for redheads could be traced directly to Keg’s scattered information about Caleb. 

“So that’s Rosohna,” Mollymauk drawled. 

He couldn’t have explained where the accent came from if he tried. He’d learned to speak by mimicking Keg but the words would curl in his mouth and come out with their own sound. She didn’t mind, even enjoyed it and explained he’d had the brogue before. It was nice to have something, other than a letter that had long ago started to tear at the edges of the crease, that tied him to a previous life. That tied him to the Mighty Nein. 

“I’ve never been here before, so I have no idea how we’re even going to find them unless Jester gives us a ring,” Keg tossed the stub of her cigarette on the ground and crushed it with a boot. 

“I like their sky.” 

“I don’t. That’s creepy as fuck how it just turned to night like that.” Keg scowled up at the scattering of scars. 

“That’s what makes it so nice. Not everyday you get to see the stars during the day. Maybe we can ask around, if they’re living here and have made a name for themselves someone might have heard of them. Excuse me, do you know- oh alright.” Molly asked the first townsperson his glowing eyes lighted on, but they ignored him completely. 

Keg laughed, a sharp, hard noise. “City folk. We’ll have better luck asking at a bar if we use a little gold to grease the wheels.” 

A few inquiries later and they were standing in front of an impressive house with a glowing tree on top.

“Don’t even say it. I can guess. You like the tree,” Keg had her neck craned to peer up at it. 

“Well someone has excellent taste. I’m in favor of anything that’s going to anger the Home Owners Association,” Mollymauk said, admiring the glow of lights up at the top of the house. 

“How do I look?” Keg asked abruptly. She rounded on Molly, glaring at him. 

“You’re beautiful.”

“No I mean. How’s my beard? Is it bad? Maybe we should just go back, we can do this tomorrow right? Tomorrow is good. Or maybe give it a week, there was an inn back in the other ward that we could stay at.” Keg kept talking, her eyes drifting down from the tree to look at the house itself and actually realize who was inside. 

It was Molly’s turn to laugh, and he did, moving to shove the dwarf through the gate and up toward the house. Beside him, Keg was still making protests for why they should just turn around and find a hotel in the farthest part of town possible when Molly knocked on the front door. 

After a short wait, the door swung open to reveal a tall firbolg with pink hair, tall enough he would have had to stoop in order to fit through his own door. 

“Well hi there Keg. This is a real nice surprise isn’t it? I didn’t think we’d see you here. Wow. Come on inside. Who’s your friend?” He stepped back to allow them through the door. 

Keg spluttered and Mollymauk gave her another gentle push to get her into motion. Keg stumbled forward into the house with Molly in her wake. He stepped over the thin line of silver on the threshold, and let his eyes adjust to the brighter interior of the house.

“Ahem.” Keg gave herself an actual shake and got out of her shock and in control of herself again. “Cad, this is Mollymauk. Molly, this is Caduceus.”

There was just enough of a pause while Mollymauk was waiting for some sort of reaction. Caduceus blinked slowly, the name was familiar and he was trying to place where he’d heard it before. “Nice to meet you, Mollymauk. Come on back this way and I’ll get some tea started.”

Molly glanced at Keg with raised eyebrows and Keg shrugged at him. “He never actually met you.”

“Huh?” Caduceus paused in leading them, looking over his shoulder at Keg. 

“Oh. I’ve been telling him about the Mighty Nein while we were travelling,” she said and paused for breath. 

“Well that’s nice.” He smiled, perhaps still not quite catching on.

“Cad did we have-” a human walked into the kitchen moments after they had let the door shut after them. She stopped to stare at both Mollymauk and Keg, eyes wide and the color training from her face. “Buh. Fuck? Fuck! What the fuck! Mollymauk?”

Keg kept opening her mouth with something to say and closing it, rather like a fish trying to breathe. A crimson color was stealing up her cheeks beneath her stubble and Mollymauk made the leap of logic that this had to be Beauregard. 

“Hi,” Molly lifted a hand and waved, not sure what he was supposed to do. 

There was a flash of lights and a sharp crack across his jaw and Mollymauk was suddenly on the floor. He couldn’t quite hear what the chaos of voices were saying due to a roar in his ears while staring up at the ceiling. By the time he was picking himself up, Keg offered him a hand to help get him on his feet. 

“Are you real?” Beau asked, now standing one Caduceus away from him with her arms crossed over her chest. 

Mollymauk had a sudden, new appreciation for all those muscles and Keg’s appreciation of them. Probably for different reasons than getting punched in the face. He popped his jaw to make sure it still worked before answering. “I’ve been told so. You must be Beauregard?”

“What the shit, Molly?”

“Wait, you know him?” Caduceus said, clearly having a revelation. “Here I was just being amazed what a common name Mollymauk was that I could cross paths with two of them in a year like that.”

“Yeah Cad, he’s our Molly. The one who-” 

“Died.” Mollymauk finished for her, seeing her hesitation. 

All the aggression in Beauregard’s frame withered away and her expression softened. “Yeah. That.” 

“Well, if you’re done hitting guests, I’ll go let some of the others know. It’s really nice to meet you, Mollymauk. I’ve heard really nice things. Just, really great,” Caduceus seemed to reassess who he was introducing himself to. 

“So have I.” Molly grinned at him. Out of nervous habit he checked the inner pocket of his coat and made sure the letter was still there. 

“So what the fuck happened? How did you even get here?” Beau asked, directing the question at the both of them.

“We’ll just end up repeating the story when everyone’s here,” Keg pointed out. “You um. Look good.” 

Beauregard smiled and Mollymauk took a step back from a quieter conversation between the two of them. Keg had made such a point of not stating what her relationship with the monk was that he knew exactly how she felt.

When the other members of the Might Nein arrived he half-braced to be punched again but most of their greetings were less violent than Beauregard’s had been. Jester, the blue one, swept him off his feet into a hug and they then needed the help of everyone present to get their horns untangled from one another. She was followed by Fjord, the green half-orc and a very confused question from Keg about what the hell had happened to his accent. Jester had already run off to get more people when the goblin girl, Nott arrived and started drinking when she thought no one was looking. 

Still no Caleb. Molly kept craning to look when someone new joined them in the kitchen and he was genuinely pleased to meet all of them. He was fidgeting with his coat when Yasha entered the kitchen, so he didn’t see her until he was swept up and off the ground into a crushing hug. He didn’t resist; after Beau had punched him, the rest of meeting the Mighty Nein had gone rather like Keg had promised it would. They were all delighted to find him alive even if they didn’t quite believe it. 

“When did you get here?” Yasha asked as she put him down. She was tall and impressive and, Mollymauk imagined, intimidating in the right circumstances. But her face looked soft and vulnerable when she looked at him and he found himself smiling up at her with the same warmth. She didn’t ask how he was alive, that had been the usual refrain, she didn’t even seem entirely surprised to find him alive. 

“Oh ten minutes ago? Give or take.” 

She started to speak again but was drowned out by the reappearance of Jester with the last of the Mighty Nein in tow, she was pulling Caleb into the very crowded room. Mollymauk’s focus narrowed on the red hair and the blue eyes and everything else seemed to go blurry and hazy. This was not the scruffy, smelly wizard that Keg had promised him. This wizard had his red hair pulled neatly back and wore dark clothing in a sharp, Xhorhasian fashion. Mollymauk had to pull his eyes away repeatedly and force himself to focus on Keg when she finally had the room’s attention and could tell the story of how they’d gotten here. 

He was happy to let her tell the story, he knew she was proud of herself for managing this monumental task she had set out to perform. To fix letting Molly get killed by returning him to the people who missed him. While she talked it was natural to feel eyes on him, everyone in the kitchen was dividing their attention between Keg and Molly. All but one, Caleb kept having to wrench those blue eyes away from him while Keg talked, Mollymauk almost caught him staring each time he’d direct his eyes to look at him. 

It was only necessary to add a few details here and there, to admit he didn’t remember them, and that he didn’t know why he’d been abandoned where he was. 

Caduceus finally served tea and the conversation had gotten more boisterous and soon Caleb had gone missing completely. Molly tracked his departure through the door, but didn’t stop Jester in telling a very interesting story about the Traveller and a penis candle. 

-

“Goodnight Mollymauk. I’m glad you’re alive and tomorrow we should paint your nails, okay?” Jester waved on her way out of the kitchen, one of the last few people to make their way out and off toward bed. 

Mollymauk didn’t know what time it was but he was pleasantly warm and full of the best food he’d had to eat in a while. Keg had made her excuses about the same time Beauregard had left for the night, leaving just Caduceus and Yasha still in the kitchen with him. 

“Yasha you want to set our guest up for the night?” Caduceus asked, putting away the last of the clean dishes by the sink.

“He’s family, not a guest,” she clarified. 

“Oh well family gets to sleep in the happy fun room,” he didn’t even skip a beat. “Welcome back to the family, Mollymauk.” 

“Thank you, Mister Clay,” Molly answered. 

“Oh. Now Mister Clay, that’s my father. Caduceus is formal enough for me.” 

“Alright Caduceus,” he watched the firbolg leave, then directed his attention to Yasha. “What’s a happy fun room?”

“I think it’s occupied. Beau and Jester share a room,” Yasha said, taking the seat next to him. 

There was a moment while Molly recalled Keg following Beauregard from the kitchen. “Ah.” 

“But you can bunk with me. Wouldn’t be the first time.” 

Mollymauk looked up at Yasha and canted his head to the side. “Keg never really knew you, but she knew you were important to me. What are we?”

“Family. We were in the circus together before we were with these folks,” Yasha explained, leaning her elbows on the table behind her. “And now they’re family.”

“I would have liked the circus.”

She laughed. “You loved it. You like being the center of attention.”

“I can’t deny that,” Molly laughed softly. 

“I remember the first time you woke up like that. I’m glad you had someone this time. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there this time, Molly. I can’t lose anyone like that again, and I have these idiots to look after.” There was something haunted in Yasha’s eyes when she spoke. “I have so much to atone for.”

Acting on instinct, Mollymauk got to his feet and leaned to kiss Yasha’s forehead. “Family forgives each other, right? Is that how it works?”

“Sometimes.” She was trying to give the impression she wasn’t pleased but having a hard time hiding her smile. “Now. Tell me why you were staring at Caleb.”

Mollymauk made a face that made Yasha laugh, and pulled one of his legs up onto the chair with him. “He was the first person I met when I woke up. I mean- I had this. No one else left anything and this was all I had and all I knew about myself. And that there was one person who existed that expected me to come back.” He pulled the delicate note from his pocket and showed it to Yasha, fighting back the hesitation to let someone else hold his talisman. 

She didn’t answer, looking at the paper and handing it back. Her silence demanded that he keep talking, she could outlast his quiet. Yasha had deep wells of silence within her, enough to outlast anyone’s unwillingness to elaborate. He could see this just sitting in her presence, relaxed and comfortable. 

“Keg put it in my head that he and I, that we, were together,” he explained after much deliberation over the words.

“What do you think?” Yasha asked, not answering the unspoken question.

He wrapped his tail around his own leg, frowning at it rather than at Yasha. “I don’t think we were, his face was all wrong for someone reunited with their lost love or- or their fuck buddy. Am- am I wrong?”

She rolled her shoulders in a shrug. “I didn’t always move with the Might Nein, for a long time I was following the will of the Storm Lord but-” Yasha stopped there, looking up at the ceiling. “You’re not wrong.”

“But there’s something. Yeah?” Mollymauk knew there was a stupid flare of hope in his face when he looked up at Yasha. He couldn’t control it sometimes.

Her smile softened and turned sad at the edges as she looked years back. “We can’t help who we love. We can’t help but mourn those we love and lose and getting someone back- Molly I’m glad you’re back. I’ll make sure that it’s not necessary again. You should keep this life, it’s a good one.”

“I’m glad to be back and being part of this family again.” 

They were quiet and comfortable together while the fire slowly dimmed and cooled. 

“So I’ll put a bunk in my room?” Yasha offered.

Mollymauk swallowed a flutter of nerves. “Where does Caleb sleep?”

“Pretty much the opposite side of the house from here. Same floor though.” Her smile changed again and she was almost grinning. 

He smiled back, caught in her playful mood. “I think I’ll manage my own sleeping arrangements tonight.”

“If you strike out, I’m upstairs, Jester’s put our names on the door up there, so you’ll know where to find me.” Yasha rose to her feet and stretched. “Be gentle with him. Caleb is wound tight, like a spring that’s going to snap one day.”

“Aye.” He watched her leave and took a few more minutes to gather his courage, watching the dying fire while he practiced what he wanted to say in his head. He wanted to thank Caleb for helping him to be himself, for showing him the path to being Mollymauk instead of someone else entirely. He wanted- he wanted so much. Too much. To sink into those blue eyes and discover who the sleek, handsome wizard was that he’d found in place of the smelly, hobo wizard he’d been expecting. 

Before he could wind himself up tight enough to snap, Mollymauk rose to his feet and found his best scoundrel smile between the kitchen and Caleb’s bedroom door. He took one second to make sure his hair was appropriately mussed and then knocked sharply on the door.

There was a pause. “One moment.” Caleb’s voice was muffled on the other side of the heavy wooden door but not sleepy. At least Molly wasn’t the only one up in the night, caught in the trap of his own thoughts.

He leaned against the frame and effected a casual air by the time Caleb opened the door.

“Hi,” Mollymauk found himself caught in Caleb’s blue eyes and unable to pull himself away. It was unfair that this wizard was devastatingly pretty. “Do you mind if I come in? Just to talk.”


	5. The Happy Ending Episode

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after, dramatic music!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking around! I'm pretty pleased with this as a whole so I hope you've enjoyed it!

Caleb woke up alone. This was fairly normal for him so at first he didn’t react to being awake other than he was bothered by the unsettling feeling of trying to hold onto a dream. What had he been dreaming of that had left him so warm and content. 

There was a smell he couldn’t quite identify in his room but it was enough to turn the gears in his mind and connect the events of last night to now. 

Mollymauk and Keg.

Molly and Caleb.

There was a flash of panic when there was no one for Caleb’s hand to grasp in the bed because no one was there. He’d fallen asleep and the dream had escaped him and it was like Mollymauk had died all over again. He was still disoriented but unable to control the sudden rush of anguish that came out as a choked sob. 

Pushing up from his position on the bed, Caleb found that his blankets were strange and heavy and turned his head into the collar of a coat. It was familiar and strange all at once but the smell of it washed over him like the tide. Spice and incense and more than a little bit of body odor, brightly colored and well loved even if it was travel-worn. Mollymauk’s coat was draped on top of Caleb and the relief in his chest was almost as painful as the mourning had been. 

No one knocked and the door swung open, Mollymauk barging in with a tray in his arms and a jaunty step. Caleb peered at him over the top of the coat, his hand closed so tight around the collar that it ached. It had been real that Molly had returned, real that he’d been here in Caleb’s room last night. He didn’t know what his expression was, but Mollymauk’s face transformed from cheerful to concerned in the span of a heartbeat after seeing him. 

“Everything okay?” He stopped in his tracks, breakfast for two probably heavy in his arms. 

“I- You were not here,” Caleb said, by way of explanation. 

Understanding crossed the tiefling’s face and he unfroze. He hooked his foot on the desk chair to pull it out and sit with the tray on his legs. “I meant to be back before you woke up.”

Caleb took a shuddering breath and retreated beneath blankets and coat to collect himself. He didn’t know where the tears came from but scrubbed them from his face anyway. Why was he crying? Mollymauk was alive and he was here in the Xhorhaus and Caleb didn’t have a reason to be upset. 

“When you’re ready, there’s tea. I haven’t heard of a blend called Mrs. Archer before but it smells really good.” Molly’s voice penetrated both the coat and the well of Caleb’s emotions to reach him.

“Mrs. Archer is a person, not a blend,” Caleb from inside his cocoon. Not quite ready yet to emerge, but unable to resist the warmth in Mollymauk’s voice. 

“You what now? I got to drink people tea and no one thought to tell me? Who did we drink last night?” Molly’s voice pitched higher with incredulity as he asked this. 

His tone made Caleb laugh despite himself. Slowly, Caleb emerged from his cave and popped his head out from under the coat to look at Mollymauk. “It’s not made from people, but it is grown from them. Mister Clay was, before we whisked him away to a life of adventure, the keeper of a graveyard not that far from- where you woke up.”

“Huh.” Mollymauk didn’t make a particular show of Caleb emerging to join him, instead looking into his cup of dubious tea. “You know under different circumstances, there could have been a Tealeaf varietal of tea. I wonder what that would have tasted like. The Tealeaf tea leaf blend, if you will.”

This solicited another laugh from Caleb, weak and shallow thought it may be. He carefully pushed the coat aside and slid out from the blankets to sit on the edge of the bed. “I am glad these are not those circumstances, though I would not mind trying the Tealeaf tea leaf sometime.” 

Mollymauk grinned cheekily at him, stuck his pinky up, and sipped from his cup. “I’d be fucking delicious.” 

Caleb had to put a hand over his mouth to avoid spitting tea across his desk, surprised into another bout of laughter. When had he last laughed this much in the morning? Not in a long time. The Mighty Nein made him laugh, but he was often alone in the mornings by choice. 

“And what would the Widogast blend be like?” he asked, wiping his face and hand on a napkin that Molly helpfully handed him. 

“Oh that’s a good question. Well the Tealeaf tea leaf would be a bit spicy, everyone likes the smell of it and thinks they want a sip, but only someone with really bad taste actually enjoys that tea and keeps coming back for more.” Mollymauk talked quickly, his accent rolling off his tongue, unchanged by dying and crossing the continent to find them. “The Widogast blend, now that one is a tea connisuer’s tea. Bitter and a dark one as it steeps but anyone who knows their people tea, they are drawn to that Widogast tea.” 

As Molly spoke, Caleb found himself watching him talk. There was still a little something of the circus barker in his expressions, the showman that he had originally met. But there was as much different about Mollymauk as seemed familiar about him. “Very smooth, Mister Tealeaf.”

“Biscuit?” Mollymauk offered him a plate of hard, little rolls.

Caleb took the biscuit without really registering what he was accepting. “Thank you.”

“You know, I wasn’t being nosey on purpose but I found this under the pillow last night while you were asleep,” Molly said, picking up a box from Caleb’s desk. 

A small box that was very familiar from the previous day because Caleb had been carrying it around in his pocket most of the day. And left it under his pillow after inviting this handsome, inscrutable man into his bedroom in the middle of the night. Fuck.

“Ah- that-”

“Here he is!”

The second person to barge into Caleb’s room without knocking that morning was Jester. Caleb’s immediate reaction was to pull Mollymauk’s coat up to his chin, as though it would somehow hide that he hadn't put a shirt on or the hickey on his collarbone that Molly had left. 

“Oh. My. Gosh. So the rumors were true,” Jester looked delighted to have found Caleb half-dressed and Molly with a tray of breakfast on his lap. “Did you guys have sex? Molly did you bring him breakfast in bed because it was so-”

Someone behind her cleared their throat and the door swung just enough to reveal Beau peering over Jester’s shoulder into the room and Yasha looking away. 

“Right. We will ask you questions later, but we’re here to take you shopping, Molly. Beau says you smell as bad as you look pretty and so we’re going to go get pretty dresses and get manicures and the foot one too.” Jester swept Molly to his feet before he seemed to know just what was happening. “And when we come back Caduceus will have the spa full and we can eat cupcakes. We have so much to catch up on.”

Mollymauk cast one look over his shoulder at Caleb before he was off with Beau and Jester, Keg and Nott trailing in their wake. Yasha was slower to leave and leaned in through the doorway. “It’s warm enough he won't need that, if you need something to hang onto.”

Caleb laughed nervously, but his grip on the coat was so tight his hand hurt again. “You’ll bring him back, ja?”

Yasha frowned and for a moment Caleb was worried he’d offended her. Molly’s death surely haunted her in the same way it haunted him, perhaps more as she had an actual relationship with him. Not- His stomach twisted and he realized he’d missed his chance to talk in the morning. That Mollymauk would find out the truth while he was out and immediately regret the night he’d spent in Caleb’s room. 

“Hey.” Yasha’s voice cut through the panic and he looked up at her. “I’ll bring him back. Keep the coat if you need to be reminded he’s real.”

He swallowed the knot in his throat and forced his hand to relax. “Thank you.”

She smiled at him and he found reassurance in her solid confidence. “I’m glad that he’s back.”

“He is real. Isn’t he?” Caleb asked, lowering his eyes to the coat still held in his hands. She was quiet long enough that Caleb felt he needed to fill the silence. “I- he wasn’t here when I woke up and I- just for a moment. But what if it had been a dream?”

Yasha continued to be quiet and he thought perhaps she had left until there was one heavy step and then her weight on the bed next to him. “I can’t promise that he’s real. I can’t even promise that this- that I’m real, you know? I know he’s dead but sometimes I’m not sure if what I want is even what I want or if it’s what Obann wants.”

Caleb released his breath as a laugh that bordered on manic. “That is a familiar feeling. It will take time.”

“I think that trusting Molly is real will take time too. And we have each other. Right?”

This time he was quiet for a moment before looking up at her. “You are a good friend, Yasha.”

“I know.”

They remained there, neither needing to fill the silence, until Yasha perked up on hearing a voice that Caleb couldn’t hear. “Oh. Okay. I have to go now, or I won't be able to get a pedicure.”

“Have fun.”

Yasha waved as she stepped out through the door, but then reappeared seconds later. “Caleb, what is a pedicure?”

-

He spent the day worrying about the charm that Molly had found. The box was missing and Caleb could only guess that it had still been in the tiefling’s hand when he’d been dragged away by Jester and company. There was also that he’d lied the night before and that sat uncomfortably in his stomach like a lead weight. 

Caleb buried himself in his work, Mollymauk’s coat on his bed where he could turn his head to see it or reach out to feel the embroidery under his fingers. Frumpkin had settled in his lap, not relaxed enough to lay down but alert and watching Caleb work. He was a reflection of Caleb who certainly didn’t feel relaxed enough for anything other than throwing himself into his work. 

At some point, Caduceus knocked and left a tray of food and tea; Caleb thought they may have had some amount of conversation but he didn’t recall any of it. He also didn’t get up for the food, leaning into his work and flipping through books until his eyes felt heavy and his wrists ached. Anything to keep his chest from feeling tight, anything to keep him from questioning if Mollymauk was real or not. 

It was clear when everyone came home, the house carried their sound and happiness through the walls itself. Caleb hunched his shoulders and turned inward, drowning out their happiness and concentrating on his solitude. 

Someone knocked on the door and Caleb didn’t initially answer, but whoever it was knocked a second time after a moment. 

“Ja. One moment,” he swept half his work aside and got to his feet to open the door. 

As he had last night, Mollymauk was leaning in the doorway, only he was dressed in new, flamboyant clothes in the Xhorhasian fashion. Molly looked good in layers and sharp angles, it left Caleb interested in teasing the layers apart to see what ticked beneath the surface. Just like any other fascinating puzzle. 

“Hey. Busy?” Molly looked past him to the half-cleared desk and then back to Caleb. 

“Not- yes. I do not have to be.” 

“Good. I brought you a present,” Mollymauk grinned.

Caleb couldn’t help but frown. “Mollymauk we-”

Molly interrupted him, leaning forward to kiss him and wrapping his tail around Caleb’s waist. Caleb only had a light shirt on while he worked, lacking his coat and books that would have kept him from being aware of just how warm the tail was with only the one layer of fabric between them. Caleb responded immediately, hand wrapping around the back of Mollymauk’s neck to pull him closer. They stumbled, not even closing the door, and landing with Caleb’s back on the bed and Molly heavy on top of him. 

They could have continued, Caleb didn’t have to say anything and he could have let Molly keep kissing him. But the tiefling hadn’t asked if he wanted this tonight. They had agreed to talk in the morning and- And Caleb had been mislead before in his life. He would not mislead Molly if he could help it. 

He paused, breathing hard and very aware of the taste of Mollymauk on his lips. Before Molly could lean in for another kiss, Caleb hooked a finger on one of his horns to halt the motion. 

“Wait I- Last night you said we could talk today,” Caleb said, his voice husky and full of want that he could not indulge just yet. 

Mollymauk made a noise of frustration in his throat but he smiled at Caleb. “Always the words with you. I can think of so many other fun things to do with your mouth.”

Caleb flushed but smiled, not immune to Molly’s flirt and charm. “Words first and then, if you are still inclined that can be a part of the negotiations.”

“Oh, we’re negotiating now?” Molly looked interested.

“I do not know,” Caleb admitted. “But we are talking.”

Mollymauk gave him one of his best, unreadable looks, steady red eyes gazing at him. “Have you eaten?”

“What?”

“There’s a tray with food on it and it doesn’t look like it’s been touched. Negotiations are better if both parties are fed. Wait here, I’ve been dying to see if this place has the sort of kitchen where I can just roll up and there’s good food ready. I would do inappropriate things to live in a house like that.” Molly deftly untangled his tail and jumped to his feet, giving Caleb just enough time to sit up on his elbows and watch him leave. 

He wasn’t gone long, returning with a fresh tray of food and some steaming tea. Caleb hadn’t eaten more than the few biscuits that he’d shared with Molly that morning and felt suddenly ravenous at the sight of fresh food when he wasn’t struggling with uncertainty if Molly was going to come back. And the linger weight of a conversation that had not happened yet. Would they go back to be friends after this or worse, would Mollymauk choose to leave because Caleb had lied.. 

“I do love the tall one. Caduceus? He’s a little creepy but the good kind of creepy. Like I think he really would eat the moss that grows on my dead body given the chance? He says planting people isn’t that different than planting potatoes. It’s just a different sort of crop. Wild. I like it.” He set the tray on Caleb’s desk after nudging a few papers aside. “Here. No negotiation should happen when one party is hungry.” 

“You’re not going to let go of that, are you?” Caleb asked, shifting to sit in the desk chair rather than the bed. 

“Not until we’re kissing again. I feel like more things would be settled amicably if people were gently kissing just along someone’s throat while they discussed things they wanted.” Molly had dropped onto the bed and stroked the end of his tail along Caleb’s collarbone as he said this. 

Caleb nearly choked on his sandwich. 

“Is that all you can think of?” he asked. 

Molly just spread his hands, indicating he was literally on Caleb’s bed, in his room. Caleb felt himself turning scarlet and took a swig of too-hot tea to try and clear the sandwich currently making it impossible to swallow or breathe. 

“You okay, mate?” Mollymauk sat up and leaned forward to slap Caleb on the back and help.

He held up a hand and swallowed both tea and sandwich, rubbing the end of his sleeve across his face. “M’fine.”

“Are you? I’ll keep all my body parts to myself while you eat to see that you stay that way,” Molly returned to sitting on the bed, pulling himself up to sit-cross legged, hands tucked beneath his butt and his tail weaving behind him. 

Caleb took several deep breaths and resumed eating his lunch- or was it dinner? The rest of the quick meal was much more uneventful than the first bite, but his heart started racing with the last few bites. This was it. This was the moment Mollymauk would know Caleb was a terrible person who had taken advantage of him. 

“Okay. Molly last night, we agreed to talk in the morning and that was interrupted, I am sorry,” Caleb said. He’d been working for several hours, trying to get the notes on helping Nott come together in a way that made sense. But he’d gone over what he wanted to say to Mollymauk so many times. Now that they were talking it all flew out of his head and he didn’t know what to say. 

“Go on.” Mollymauk’s tail flicked like a cat’s but he kept his hands and body to himself. 

“I was not honest with you last night,” Caleb said. “You and I. We are not um, we were never more than friends. And we were certainly not lovers.” 

Molly reached into his new jacket and pulled a familiar box from his pocket. He rolled it across the back of his fingers like a coin, then put the whole thing onto the desk surface with a solid thump. “This was a casual friend gift for a dead man?”

Caleb’s breath caught in his chest and he started to reach for the box before pulling his hands back. “I did not know you were alive.”

“This, my dear Mister Widogast, is pink quartz,” Mollymauk leaned in order to reach the box he’d set down and open the lid to show the moon charm where it sat, nestled in cheap velvet. “Do you know what pink quartz is for?”

Rather than immediately answering, Caleb stared at the charm and then brought his eyes up to Molly. “No. I just- it is stupid and I thought-”

“Love.”

“Pardon?”

Mollymauk put his hands behind him, leaning back with his legs still crossed in front of him. “Rose quartz is a stone for love.”

There was no answer for that. Caleb looked down at the stone on the charm because he couldn’t bear to look at Molly just now. He didn’t want to see the change in his expression, see him go from that soft adoration and the touch of his tail, to someone who understood what Caleb was trying to tell him. Caleb knew he was all mixed signals, that he’d had a gift for a dead man who he claimed wasn’t his lover but had admitted to wanting just the night before.

He heard the mattress on the bed shift and didn’t look up, certain that Molly was rising to leave. So when he started talking, Caleb was startled into looking up at the tiefling laying on his stomach, tail flicking again and his feet kicked up. 

“I had figured that out you know,” Mollymauk said, chin on his hands and gazing up at the wall over the bed rather than directly at Caleb. “Before Keg and I got here. And confirmed it with Yasha.”

“What?” It felt like the floor had dropped out from under Caleb. 

Molly flipped onto his side to stare at him, tail draping across his thigh. “What happened to all your work? I like when it was sitting out.”

Caleb was still reeling from Molly’s confession he’d known before he’d shown up in Caleb’s door last night that they hadn’t been lovers before he had died. When the conversation took an abrupt turn he didn’t know what to say other than to answer the question Molly had asked. 

“I put some of it away- Molly I-”

“Hang on, I’m going somewhere with this. Well, maybe. Look, it sounded good when I practiced in my head so just bear with me.” Mollymauk said, laughing nervously. He reached for his old coat, still laying on the bed and rummaged in the pockets for a moment. “Do you know what the first thing I knew about myself was?” 

He shook his head, his attention completely given to Mollymauk. There was a flare of something warm in his chest but he didn’t dare name it hope because it was such a weak flame that could easily be doused. 

From a pocket deep in his coat, Mollymauk pulled a note that Caleb remembered writing as soon as he saw it. The paper was well-worn from handling, the corners of the fold in the center just starting to tear from being opened frequently. Oh.

“And so when Keg told me this was a letter from my lover I found it intriguing that he left such an impersonal letter. But I had a name, and you gave it to me. By the time we got here, I’d almost worked it out. And by the time you left the kitchen last night I knew.” Molly opened the letter at the same time he spoke, red eyes almost visible through the thin paper. 

“So why did you come here? Last night. If you knew.” 

“Because I’ve had a lot of time to think about the person who gave me a name. The only person who left me something so that I could come back to him. And even if we weren’t lovers, there’s something that ties who I once was to who I am now, and that’s you, Caleb.” He didn’t sit up, letting the letter close and putting it away deep in the coat. But his eyes remained on Caleb when he talked, enigmatic and impossible to look away from. “Sure I have a card and a tapestry but none of that could help tell me about myself.”

Caleb swallowed, trying to ignore the warmth in his chest and trying to tell himself that even if Molly said this was going somewhere, it would end in heartache. 

“Besides. You don’t kiss like someone who is used to having all of this at their disposal,” Molly struck a pose on the bed and gestured at himself, grinning impishly. 

This made Caleb laugh. “Then why not just- why not just say so?”

“This was way more fun,” Mollymauk answered with a shrug. “Like I said, I’ve had a lot of time to think about who gave me my name. I like your handwriting. I used to imagine what you would be like but all I could think of was that note and- have you ever found someone’s words to be a little erotic even if they weren’t meant that way?”

Caleb laughed again, thinking Mollymauk was making a joke but on looking up the tiefling’s expression hadn’t changed to be joking. 

“Oh.”

“So I’m sorry for lying to you, Caleb.” He sat up, the motion fluid. Molly glanced at the open charm box of the desk and back to the wizard, face solemn. “You were more than anything I could imagine, and I wanted to know what sort of man you were. How you kissed, if you would take the thing you clearly wanted. And you’re a better man than I am. I knew I was leading you on and I would have led you down that path until there was no going back.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll go if you want. We can pretend none of this happened and we can be friends and- how did Yasha say it? We can be family.” While he said this, Molly was smiling but there was an edge of loneliness and melancholy to it that felt achingly familiar to Caleb. 

“Do you want this?”

Mollymauk looked up, hearing his own words from the night before used against him. “What?” 

Caleb blushed because it had taken most of his resolve to say that much. He could face down monsters and demons but that was on the behalf of this family he had come to love. But to say four words on his own behalf was the most difficult thing. 

“I do not want you to go,” Caleb admitted. “Should I put more notes out on the desk to lure you into staying?” 

There was a pause and then Mollymauk laughed, a smile easing the tension that had been in his face. “That isn’t necessary. It- was nice. To have something familiar and friendly when I got here. And nothing else was what I expected.” 

“What did you expect?” He asked. Caleb turned his body so that he was facing Molly, rather than hunching over his desk so that he could avoid meeting his eyes. 

After a moment’s thought, Mollymauk responded, picking his words carefully. “Keg was less than complimentary about your personal hygiene. So I came here expecting a stinky wizard.”

Caleb breathed the laugh of someone who had been pretending he found a joke funny, even though it had long ago worn out its welcome. “Yes well, if you want-”

“No no. I can’t say I’d have minded. But it was a pleasant surprise to find that you were beyond anything I could have imagined. I didn’t know your eyes were blue. And I rather enjoy how you smell, Caleb,” the tiefling interrupted him, relaxed now that he knew Caleb wasn’t going to chase him out.

Caleb reached out, picking up the charm in its box where it sat on the corner of the desk. “I did get this for someone I thought was dead.” The pink crystal caught his attention and twisted his tongue until Caleb couldn’t find words. Molly waited, patient and giving him the chance to finish his thoughts when his mouth would cooperate again. “I do not know what love is. I don’t know if I loved you but I would like the chance to know you again. To find out- ah. Find out if I- if we.” He swore in Zemnian, tangling what he wanted and what he knew until he wasn’t sure what he was trying to say anymore.

“I’d like to find out too,” Molly’s voice was soft. “I wouldn’t say no if you wanted to give me a dead man’s gift.”

“I- yeah. May I add it to your peacock’s tail?” Caleb asked with the barest tremble in his hands as he liberated the charm from the box. 

“My tail? Are you referring to my actual tail or my tattoo or- oh the whole ensemble,” Mollymauk sat up, slightly confused for a moment and talking himself to where Caleb’s mind was already at. 

He knew there was a stupid smile on his face when he sat down beside Mollymauk on the bed, Caleb pulled one leg up and hooked his foot beneath the opposite knee. “Lean closer, circus man.” 

Molly put a hand on the bed next to Caleb’s leg and leaned closer. He was quiet while Caleb found the precise place among the baubles and chains Mollymauk had adorned himself with, attaching the moon so that it could hang with the stars where it belonged. 

“How does it look?”

Caleb leaned back on one hand, dazzled by being so close to Mollymauk without any fresh lies between them. “Beautiful.” 

Glowing, red eyes turned to him and Mollymauk leaned closer, stopping just shy of kissing Caleb and so close he could smell the spice on his breath. “May I kiss you?”

“I would like that very much.” 

-

“Caleb!” Jester was somehow capable of making his name far more syllables than it actually was. 

“Yes Jester?” He turned his attention to her, cup of Caduceus’s tea held carefully. 

She glared about as fiercely as the short, blue tiefling was capable of glaring. “You are taking up all of Molly’s time and you should share him.” 

“I believe he is out with Yasha, actually,” Caleb answered. “He is not a puppy though, if you want to spend time with Molly you just have to ask him.”

“He sure makes the puppy eyes at you, Caleb,” she grinned and pretending to laugh suggestively. 

Days ago Caleb would have been flustered by this, and he still blushed while taking a drink of tea to try and cover it. It was an open secret that Molly slept in Caleb’s room and if the others wanted to assume where they were in their relationship, trying to correct them would only make them more convinced of their truth. 

“Caleb?” Jester came back from her own thoughts, drawing Caleb from his as well. “I’m really glad Molly’s back. And not just because I missed him. You smile so much more now, and I really like when you smile.”

“Ja. I- I am happy he is back as well.” He agreed.

“All that boning sure does do you good,” she added, elbowing Caleb in the ribs.

It wasn’t the first tea cup that had shattered in Caduceus’s kitchen and it certainly would not be the last.


End file.
